I hit 80 this last weekend.  Thing is, I already had all my Resto talents in place pre WOLK.  The only points I was not able to get until WOLK was in improved shields and Insta ghost wolf.  Everything else went into Ele tree.  Theres plenty in the resto tree that really is not needed.

I been doing straight questing.  The idea (from what I always believed) behind rest, was it was to help make up for the time you are not spending lvling, but it is not going to replace lvling all together.  I always saw it as a way to keep up at your lvling pace, but I also don't rely on kills to gain lvls, I rely on quest turn ins.  And as such, with rested exp, the bonus does not apply. 

One of the things I found that helped, is instead of using my book of the highborne, I been using my ole PVP shield, (Which I just replaced last night)  What this did for me was boost my armor, while taking my healing ability down.  Though when running instances, I would switch em.  Reason being is only person I need to heal when solo questing is myself, so I know i dont need OP heals for that.

I also still have not swapped out a piece of T6 gear yet, but I am hoping that that this changes once I finally get back to dungeons.  I been having too much fun doing quests.  Also do the string that starts with the quest They Took our men in K3.  The quests will have you be saying WTF that was awsome, as well as I started it yesterday and spent a good 8 hours, and the quest string keeps leading to new quest strings.  I guarentee it will not dissapoint (with exceptiong to beating exhausted Vikruls)

I started off leveling as ret with some random T5 I'd picked up in smash'n'grab (i look like a warrior) then specced prot for a little while for instances. after i finished with the dungeons i tried to quest prot, the damage is far better then pre-3.0 but the current ret just mows down mobs. decent AOE and lots of burst, single mobs drop in a 6-8 second rotation and multiples about as quick. Mobs in genereal didn't seem too keen to let me try to prot aoe grind (plus you can't Rank 1 consecration kite anymore since the downranking nerf.) I'll keep ret until 80, then prot and go primary prot/secondary ret once they have dual speccing in place.

Side note, i saved my first azol'nerub run, was DPSing ret and the feral tank was horribad, healer was about to bail and I said i'd put on my prot gear and try to tank... i died at about the end of every boss fight (enh shaman healing) but no full wipes. felt very strange after having tanked prot so much.

As an update I been having fun staying resto.  I like it as when I upgrade gear I can stay focused on maintining the type of stats I need to be on top of.  Plus I can live for days.  I can't wait to get some of the new spells, as 71 and 72 spells sucked for me with exception of new lesser healing.  I have a feeling that in arena 2v2's at 80 resto shaman are going to be OP'd heh.  hex then heal